Our best guess right now is that GCW-Sieve has about a year to go before it gets shut down. It's way too early to know whether it will shut down permanently or temporarily. We may eventually start testing additional bases, and if so, we'll need to sieve those bases.

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Since it seems that tasks done has gone 25% after this post (excluding the ESP challenge when it went down) and a month has passed, has the estimation of time remaining changed? Could sieving for some bases be shut down before others?

Since it seems that tasks done has gone 25% after this post (excluding the ESP challenge when it went down) and a month has passed, has the estimation of time remaining changed? Could sieving for some bases be shut down before others?

Time remaining is a fuzzy value as the optimal sieving level depends on what kind of CPUs we assume are running both sieving and LLR. It's less than a month since Mike's first post and the deadline is still more or less a year away.

Yes, we have individual control over which bases we sieve and it's likely that some bases will be shut down earlier than others.

Have there been any considerations as to which project is going to be selected as default when new users join Primegrid?

Perhaps PPS-sieve?

You ask a VERY good question.

We discussed this last month, and while we didn't make any decision, the two most likely candidates are PPS-Sieve and GFN-16. The reason PPS-Sieve isn't the obvious choice is because the tasks are rather long (because of the GPU tasks) and we won't really need any of this sieving for many, many years. The PPS sieve is way ahead of the LLR effort.
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We discussed this last month, and while we didn't make any decision, the two most likely candidates are PPS-Sieve and GFN-16. The reason PPS-Sieve isn't the obvious choice is because the tasks are rather long (because of the GPU tasks) and we won't really need any of this sieving for many, many years. The PPS sieve is way ahead of the LLR effort.

We want to avoid using LLR or any other AVX/FMA-capable project as a default project. On modern Intel CPUs use of these features consume more power, produce more heat, and make more noise (from fans speeding up) than unsuspecting users might be expecting.

That leaves PPS-Sieve and GFN-16 through GFN-20 as the only options.

Or GFN16 CPU. No AVX necessary.

Didn't I say that in my initial answer to the question? PPS-Sieve or GFN-16 are the most likely projects to be the default after GCW-Sieve.
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It seems that 321 and Cullen/Woodall are only sieved to half the N level as most of the other LLR projects. While all the conjectures and GCW are sieved to either n=50M or, in the case of bases other than 2, 15 million digits, 321 and CW are sieved only to n=25M.

At some point we will need to restart both of those sieves in order to sieve 25M<n<=50M. It's not an urgent need, and we certainly have at least a few years before it's a problem, but 321 sieve would make a good default CPU project and CW sieve would make a good default GPU project if we had an AMD app to go along with the existing Nvidia app.

In theory, 321-sieve would be a better choice for a default CPU app than either PPS-Sieve or GFN-16, so this is something we're likely to give a lot of thought to.

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Yeah, everyone wants to see old projects reopened to get that next badge, or to be able to get a badge that closed before you started. I have no doubt that restarting any suspended project will be very popular.

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At some point we will need to restart both of those sieves in order to sieve 25M<n<=50M. It's not an urgent need, and we certainly have at least a few years before it's a problem, but 321 sieve would make a good default CPU project and CW sieve would make a good default GPU project if we had an AMD app to go along with the existing Nvidia app.

For those of us who are newcomers and did not have the opportunity earlier to work on these two badges, this is awesome news! Even just one of the two starting "soon" would be most welcome.

Yeah, everyone wants to see old projects reopened to get that next badge, or to be able to get a badge that closed before you started. I have no doubt that restarting any suspended project will be very popular.

What about TRPsv, will that reopen or is it up to 50M already? My only silver badge. Really like to get it to turquoise :(
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What about TRPsv, will that reopen or is it up to 50M already? My only silver badge. Really like to get it to turquoise :(

It's 50M.

We just shut it down relatively recently. I don't expect to reopen it unless there's some unexpected change that makes sieving suddenly more efficient that testing with LLR.
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Michael, are we still on track with the original guestimate that "GCW-Sieve has about a year to go before it gets shut down"?

I have no additional information at this time. I will let you know when our plans are better defined. Don't expect more information until 2019 since we will be busy with the server move.
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We've just shut down GCW sieving for bases 29, 47, 101 and 109 as they're past the optimally sieved point. This will allow the other bases (13, 25, 49, 55, 69, 73, 121) to sieve faster. There's no change in credit and if I hadn't said anything, very few of you would have noticed the difference. Unsent and in-progress workunits already created for those four bases will stay in the system until they complete normally.

My RAC on each of my systems has dropped by about 2000 credits/day. Has there been any sort of change implemented in relation to the work units? I know that some bases have been dropped but would the remaining bases require extra processing and which would potentially explain the drop in RAC?

The only change at my end has been the drop in ambient temperature and which would help slightly if nothing else.

Thanks.

Edit: I went back to BOINC 7.6.22 from my recent upgrade to 7.14.2. I will see how things proceed from here.

My RAC on each of my systems has dropped by about 2000 credits/day. Has there been any sort of change implemented in relation to the work units? I know that some bases have been dropped but would the remaining bases require extra processing and which would potentially explain the drop in RAC?

The only change at my end has been the drop in ambient temperature and which would help slightly if nothing else.

Thanks.

Edit: I went back to BOINC 7.6.22 from my recent upgrade to 7.14.2. I will see how things proceed from here.

Besides ending some bases, there has been no other change on the server side. If that changed your RAC, however, it's only because the bases that were shut down were getting slightly too much credit, but I don't think that would have been significant enough to notice.

I don't remember whether Jim has released new sieve files or not, but that will only speed up the sieve (and we don't adjust credit when we do that), so even if you could notice that change, it would be up, not down.
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I am running GCW Sieve using purely CPU's and hopefully the NVIDIA driver does not impact things. Let me see how things go with the older version of BOINC which I have purposely reinstalled. Something that I noticed in passing has been the fact that there would be rather frequent CPU benchmarkings going on with the latest version for some reason and which, of course, involves a suspension in processing for the benchmarking to transpire.

It is quite unfortunate if we have to worry about the NVIDIA drivers and/or versions of BOINC we use for maximum throughput and performance.

I am running GCW Sieve using purely CPU's and hopefully the NVIDIA driver does not impact things. Let me see how things go with the older version of BOINC which I have purposely reinstalled. Something that I noticed in passing has been the fact that there would be rather frequent CPU benchmarkings going on with the latest version for some reason and which, of course, involves a suspension in processing for the benchmarking to transpire.

It is quite unfortunate if we have to worry about the NVIDIA drivers and/or versions of BOINC we use for maximum throughput and performance.

Not sure what I was thinking, but of course you're right about GCW-Sieve being CPU only and not affected by the drivers. It seems I really do need to wake up before going on the forums.

I can't think of any reason for a big drop in RAC.
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